Twitter bans explicit adult content on Vine videos

Twitter has banned all explicit content on its Vine video service. Violators have a week to remove NSFW content.

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The six-second looping videos made on Vine tend to range from the creative to the downright wacky to the explicit, but Twitter, which introduced the video platform early last year, is removing one of those categories by choosing to ban explicit sexual content.

On Thursday, the official Vine blog posted about the update to their rules and terms of service, adding that the new rule doesn't affect "more than 99 percent of our users."

"For the rest: we don’t have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet –– we just prefer not to be the source of it," the post reads.

Newly-banned content began appearing on Vine not long after it was introduced in January 2013. Four days after the mobile app was released, the platform issued an apology when a video with adult content wound up in the Editor's Picks section due to "human error."

Though the explicit videos are said to make up a small percentage of the overall activity on Vine, the service says that after a year of seeing what content is being produced, they are "not a good fit for our community."

Twitter has also posted an FAQ to help users determine whether their content is prohibited or not. Nudity and partial nudity will still be allowed in Vines provided that it is "primarily documentary, educational or artistic in nature," such as nude protesters or a mother breastfeeding her child.

The new rule goes into effect immediately and users are instructed to report any videos that appear to violate the policy.

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Meredith Danner is a graduate of Colorado State University with a degree in journalism and technical communication. She also has experience in sports writing and athletic media relations, most recently covering the CSU softball team.

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